The Boom Box Post blog provides insights into the creative sound design process of Boom Box Post's owners and employees.
Plugin Alliance recently approached me to ask if I would like to try out one of Krotos’s newest plugins, the Reformer Pro. As a big fan of Dehumanizer by Krotos, which we previously blogged about using to create alien vocals, I quickly agreed.
Not able to wait until I had time to install the plugin and really dive in, I took a few minutes between clients at work and checked out the Krotos website to see what Reformer had to offer. What I found was this description:
Though I am fiercely passionate about all things animation audio (I wouldn’t be interning at Boom Box if I wasn’t), I share that zeal with another area of professional sound: Game Audio. On March 17th I boarded a Megabus and traveled up to San Francisco to attend the The Game Developers Conference, one of the the largest professional game industry events in the world. All aspects of the industry come to exhibit, network, and learn; from AAA to indie to student, all walks of life with varying experience and disciplines attend. In this talk I want to shine a light specifically on the tight-knit Game Audio community and a few of the many events that occurred.
Here a few ways in which the Game Audio community came together during GDC to educate and celebrate its communities.
In past blog posts we’ve discussed tips to effectively capture sound effects, methods for recording water and even how to create iPhone recordings on the fly. Today I wanted to offer some quick tips related to recording planning and recording effectively in the field. These habits can help elevate your recordings to the next level, creatively and organizationally.
This is not the sexiest blog post you will read this month. In fact, it’s probably the least sexy topic we’ll write about all year here at Boom Box Post. That said, it’s such an important one for anyone considering themselves a professional sound editor. A cluttered file structure is the equivalent of a messy home. Sure you can make do sorting through a mess, finding what you need after some intense searching. but why put yourself through it? Go to the container store, buy a pack of labels and some bins and get your stuff off the floor (I’m still on the messy house metaphor). So with that in mind, let me be your personal Peter Walsh (he is a professional organizer - I had to google it) as I help you to get your digital life in order.
This month, I wanted to continue challenging our interns to improve their recording skills and get creative so I devised a recording assignment that would require them to think outside the studio! Each intern selected 2 sound effects from a list of easy to record materials(basic foley props, things around the office) and 2 from a list of harder to record sounds(nature ambience, elevator doors, quiet sounds, etc). Colin and Dilery both did an awesome job, so lets hear about their results!
Timeflux is a specialized sound design synthesizer that runs standalone. The program focuses on stretching, morphing and processing spectral effects for sound design. Similar to most specialized software, you really have to play and experiment with it to really understand to program; TimeFlux is no different. To better understand this program, I asked my colleagues for the favorite hard sound effect and see what I could create.
For this month's Inside Sound Design post I met with Brad Meyer again, to talk more about the exciting vehicle sound effects he creates.. Brad spends a lot of his time designing exciting, signature sound effects for his shows, especially vehicles, using both custom recordings and sound library material. This time we talked about a unique semi-truck vehicle, and it’s exciting transformation sequence.
I have been a sound effects editor and supervising sound editor for a long time now. But, I have recently begun mixing a television series here at Boom Box Post. I am enjoying how much I learn each and every time that I sit down at the board, and am my no means ready to start spouting mixing advice to anyone. But, I can say that I’ve come to appreciate certain editorial practices (and absolutely abhor others!) through my new vantage point as a mixer. Things that I thought of as a nice way to make your mixer happy have turned into practices that are essential to me being able to start my mixing day right. Seriously, these five things can be the difference of hours added to my predub day. So, here are five editorial practices that I’ve realized are absolutely essential to a smooth mix.
In this months Inside Sound Design I wanted to give our new interns some unsupervised Field Recording experience. I sent Colin Grant out with a stereo recording rig and instruction to capture a minimum of 3 distinct sound recordings. He did a great job and learned a lot, so let's what he has to share about his adventures.
We open on wide shot of a forest. A river runs in the distance. Not far from the river, emerging from the trees is a bloodied man in a torn business suit, limping and desperate for water. Cut to an over the shoulder shot of him staring at the river. Cut again and the camera is right on the water as he leans in for a drink. The focus (for our purposes) isn’t the man or his torn and blood soaked suit (I just added that for some flair). From a sound editorial standpoint, the complicated element here is the river. It’s far off in the distance, now it’s close to us, now it’s full frame in an extreme close up. As a viewer, the camera is our proxy here. Wherever the camera sits, so do we. And so, as the perspective of the camera changes so does our perception.
The Galactic Assistant is a standalone specialized synth that can be used to create high tech interface sounds and / or musical samples and accents.
Our interns have hit the ground running recording sound effects and learning from our editors here at Boom Box Post. Last week we chatted with Dilery Corona so this week we sat down with Colin Grant to learn more about him and what he is excited about.
